Recognizing Plant Physiology authors: Maryam Foroozani

Maryam Foroozani, first author of Low-phosphate chromatin dynamics predict a cell wall remodeling network in rice shoots

Current Position: Ph.D. student in the lab of Dr. Aaron Smith at Louisiana State University

Education: M.Sc. in Plant Cell & Developmental Biology, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran. B.Sc. in Plant Biology, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

Non-scientific Interests: gardening, hiking, traveling

Brief bio:  I have always been fascinated by the plant world, so I decided to choose plant biology as my major for B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees.  To gain a deeper insight into plant epigenetics,  I joined Dr. Smith’s lab to understand how expression of phosphate-starvation response genes are regulated at the transcriptional and epigenetic levels. Specific experimental approaches include ChIP-seq to map the distribution of H3K4me3 and H2AZ histone variant, RNA-seq analyses to investigate global gene expression, and numerous downstream bioinformatics analyses to integrate and interpret these data sets. I am very passionate about gaining knowledge in diverse aspects of plant biology and biotechnology.